When Live Sports Fail

Not Excited

Tonight as I settled in to watch my sporting jones of choice -- NBA playoff basketball -- I was hoping for a close game. Instead, for the second straight game in the Western Conference Finals, in a matchup that I've been anticipating all year, I got a boring blowout, and in all likelihood, the end of all drama in that series. Which comes on the heels of earlier best of seven series that only lasted five and six games, and also didn't deliver much in the way of drama. True, the Eastern Conference has had a few Game Sevens, and also looks like it might provide more excitement now that the Finals has become surprisingly competitive, but I'm not going to mince words. The thing that I've been looking forward to the most looks like a dud. (Note to Oklahoma City Thunder fans: I don't have a problem with your club, and I'm sure you are over the moon right now with their performance. I just want games that aren't blowouts. If your laundry wasn't involved, you'd want the same.)

Of course, the NBA playoffs have been cherries and cream compared to the tragedy that happened at the middle jewel in horse racing's Triple Crown last weekend, where a horse had to be euthanized on the track in a preliminary race, and ye gads, I'm not sure how you go on after something that sad. Which also comes on the heels of an extremely dull Super Bowl, with a lack of scoring or fourth quarter interest, beyond the fevered prayers of people with various bets. Oh, and if you want to continue the tale of woe, the myriad miseries befalling Brazil these days are really not casting a positive light for the upcoming Olympics.

Let's roll this back into marketing and advertising now.

If sports were like other forms of entertainment media that was advertising or directly supported -- say, a run of anticipated TV shows, a string of tentpole / franchise movies, or concert festivals from big name recording artists -- that had a similar run of failure, there would be autopsies. Diminished upfront sessions. Tortured moratoriums into What's Wrong With X These Days, and how Kids These Days just had no eye for quality, or put up with substandard product because they knew no better. There would be savage teardowns of the talent, networks, media companies, hype machines, with much sniffing over how it's all going to Hell In A Handbasket (the official conveyance to Hell for lo these many years, which always seems odd to me, since travel by handbasket is never discussed in any other context)...

But sports? Bullet proof. If the Western Conference Finals in the NBA are a snooze and Thunder walk, well, wow, the Finals are must-see, either to determine if they are going to fall apart or continue their run. Horse racing will continue with the Belmont, since death at the track hasn't stopped racing for centuries, and aren't going to stop now. There will be a Super Bowl in February unless an asteroid ends all life on Earth, and an Olympics in four years no matter how badly the Rio Games go. Dull games, one can argue, are necessary, otherwise we'd not celebrate the exciting ones so much; if there were all exciting, none would be.

Which is why the cost drivers for sports placements and sponsorships are so alien to the rest of your media buying plan, and why so much of our media (hello, tightening political races! Surely the media companies' incredibly vested interest in a close race for maximum bidding for ad spots would never compromise the nature of coverage!) seems to be Nothing But Sports now.

It's bullet -- and boredom -- proof.

And probably rollback-proof, too.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Giving In To Creepy

Stalk Me

It's been nearly 15 years since "Minority Report", a dystopian sci-fi movie (is there any other kind?) that showed what personalized ads might look like on a biometric and personalized level. Well, if there were no boundaries to personal privacy, frequency control, and advertising was tied into a police state, rather than something that was tied to efficiency. Of course, you might already think we're in that dystopia, depending on your mood, and how often you wear tin foil on your head. But I digress.

As someone who has worked in adtech for most of my adult life, I can't tell you how much head shaking meh that movie has generated. Every time that automated technology has taken a tentative step forward -- adding first person names to email, dynamic elements in banners for e-commerce retargeting, swapping out ads in real-time bidding for more relevant work, upping the ante on offers to reactivate lapsed leads, and so on, and so on -- someone has inevitably brought up "Minority Report." Because adtech workers are still also consumers, and acutely aware of marketing in their own lives.

But the weird part of personalized adtech is how much we give a pass to other aspects of technology that are, well, far creepier than a more relevant banner. Every time you use a transponder in your car rather than interact with a person in a highway toll booth -- and the latter option is becoming nearly impossible, even if you'd like to take more time out of your day to be in the tourists only line -- you are giving up your exact location to an outside agency. The smartphone in your pocket could honestly double as an electronic ankle bracelet for people on parole. Depending on the age of your car, that's more tracking, and frequently it activates to alert you about service.

We have the tech to ensure that cars can't start unless the user can prove they are not inebriated, and if that tech becomes cheap enough, maybe it will be mandatory. That technology is racing the arrival of automated driving, which, given the public safety issues, might eventually lead to actually driving as a prohibited offense. (On the plus side, now everyone who wants to drink can. And we've also got a dramatically better world for the handicapped.) Something similar can be said about the transfer from analog to digital in medical records. And if you'd like to think negatively about any of that, to a world where everyone has to obey the speed limit at all times, has their medical information or credit history used against them in a linked buyer's profile, or has their food intake controlled (too many cheeseburgers this week, you're cut off), you can. The tech isn't good or bad; it just is.

The difference, of course, it that seeing the benefits of invasive tech advertising requires you to, well, work in advertising. Cut down on my time and costs at toll booths, and I'll let you monitor me. Smartphones are so useful, people get panicky if they are deprived of them for even a few minutes. No one wants to be misdiagnosed, or for their doctor to lack information. But no one believes that advertising has a similar benefit, or that the system would break if they somehow got their content without it.

But here's the thing... advertising actually *does* make your world better. It enables the production of expensive and beloved content, from high-end journalism to exceptional television, and if you want to live in a world where citizen journalists and user generated content take your media consumption from "Better Call Saul" and the New York Times to YouTube "stars" and whoever wants to write for free for the Huffington Post...

well, I'm sorry, but I'm not with you on the swap.

Because that's what at risk if cord-cutting and ad blockers achieve critical mass. An expansive and expensive increase on the audiences that remain, with a dramatically worse user experience.

So... who else is willing to put up with a little creepy?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Ads on Sports Jerseys: The Seventy Stubbers

Let's Just Call Them The Stubs

This Monday, the Philadelphia 76ers became the first team in the four major U.S. team sports to sell an ad on a jersey. StubHub will pay $5 million a year for three seasons to get a 2-inch patch on the top left of the basketball team's game day duds, in what may be the first step to an inevitable rush to revenue.

Some background... Philadelphia, the team I've rooted for my whole life (can't say it's been a very good ride, though it's had its moments), hasn't been trying very hard to win games for years now. Under the leadership of a new management and ownership group that comes from the world of corporate takeovers and tear downs, they've played the youngest roster in the league, haven't signed any significant free agents, and traded assets in the here and now for the potential of picks in the somewhere else and later. They've also run into some bad luck, drafted some injury risks, and also invested in players in foreign leagues who might come over later.

They've been so blatant about not winning games (and, of course, paying the lowest possible salary that the league will allow) that the rest of the league has complained bitterly about them, because they can't sell tickets to see this team. When the team has shown signs of competence, they've doubled down on the strategy and traded even more players for picks. It's been controversial, and now that the team is finally ready to transition away to try to win games again... well, this.

Typically as a marketing and advertising consultant, I'd applaud a client for a willingness to innovate in an attempt to increase revenue streams. But a pro sports team isn't a traditional business. It's a participant in an artificial monopoly, where competition is limited to a set number of partners, who get to share in mutual revenue regardless of competence. No matter how badly the Sixers have played basketball in the past three years -- and last year's team barely avoided winning the fewest number of games in a regular season in the league's history -- they have gotten to stay in the league. Last night, they even won the draft lottery, and get to pick first in the upcoming next influx of talent. If this strategy comes to full fruition and lays the ground work for a championship team, it really could threaten the nature of how leagues operate.

Which brings us back to the jersey move. Given where the franchise is from a PR standpoint, this is the literal floor for what a jersey sale will bring in... but it will also possibly stigmatize the practice, and may make it even harder for the team to bring in free agents. The money is basically pocket change in something like the NBA, and won't do anything more than cover some missed ticket sales. And while it's easy to imagine that sports fans will just learn to accept the ads, the same way that they have for teams and sports in other countries, it's also possible that this does brand damage, and maybe even cultivate a backlash. (To wit: an NBA tank top isn't exactly the most flattering piece of apparel for non-athletic bodies. And it's hard to imagine the Sixers have sold many commemorative jerseys recently.)

Finally, on the off chance that this just seems like a sports fan wanting things to stay the same... well, sure, there's some of that. But not all change is good, and at some point, the camel's back of revenue from a fan base has to break... especially when it's placed in front of a younger fan base that spends much of its time blocking ads, questioning corporate interests, and wondering if, say, they need to have a full cable package (which subsidizes pro sports teams to a shocking degree), vote for new stadiums in local elections (increasingly unpopular), or go to live games at all (graying audiences, especially in baseball).

Because that's the problem with diluting your brand with sponsorships. Once you break it, it stays broken.

And maybe leads to two logos, or five...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Short Term Or Short Sighted

One of the things that I do at my day job is read white papers and take in Webinars on trends in my industry. And what you see, over and over, is the move from mass adtech moves, and spray and pray distribution, to custom work, dynamic generation for personal relevance, and a concierge level of service.

There's a simple reason to this: custom work is a service, instead of a commodity, and making money from commodities isn't fun or sexy or what venture capital likes to see from adtech start ups. Commodities are always subject to third-world offsourcing and your revenue model getting hacked, because, well, hey, commodity. As an old manager told me once, you don't want to be the guy putting sugar in packets; you want to be the guy putting some zero calorie sweetener in packets, because that's going to get you a margin premium. (I have no idea if he was right on the sugar, by the way, but the point is still valid.)

And all of this seems fine and inevitable and sensible, especially when you've got consumer segments that are lucrative and small... but this also runs straight into the wall that is scalability, while also taking some serious damage from the possibilities of cybercreep and privacy actions.

Having worked on the front lines at a number of places where the tech allowed us to do wildly targeted tactics, what I can tell you from personal experience is this... abusing the potentials does not pay off. What winds up happening is that a sizable percentage of the group gets spooked by your messaging, and quickly takes steps to make sure that you lose this kind of access. Also, to let others know about the practice.

But in the short term, it works, but only if you look at things from surface and immediate metrics. And you get to look proactive about driving better rates, especially if your goal is short-term success that will prove you should be around for the long run.

Unfortunately, what inevitable winds up happening is that you eventually get to a better metric: return on investment, or ROI. That's not always a great moment for marketers, especially if the new customer acquisition turns out to be, well, a very unprofitable kind of customer. To wit; if you have only ever conditioned them to buy on price, to expect a deal if they don't buy right away, to never pay for shipping or without a coupon code... well, how good does that boost in short-term rates look now?

The better way to run your business, in my opinion, is to get to the metrics that matter as soon as possible, and to get buy-in from your management on a more holistic and long-term approach.

With the obvious caveat that, well, you need good management to get to this better place.

But if you aren't working for good management in the first place, I have one piece of advice for you... hit the short-term goal.

And make sure you're looking for your next gig, and getting paid as soon as possible for this one.

Because bad management can end more than your marketing gig, if you catch my drift...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Love Your Outliers

Go Right, Young Marketer

Today in the column, I'm going to do something odd: direct you to a long-form piece that has nothing to do with marketing and advertising. So go read about "The Lazarus Effect" in the New York Times Magazine, then come on back. (Oh, and if you refuse to click, the story covers what cancer researchers use to refer to the phenomenon of a drug having an unexpectedly great outcome for a patient, which isn't predicted based on past performance in the sample group. That's where the phrase of "extraordinary responders" comes in. It turns out that part of the massive undertaking in curing cancer is that each person's fight has aspects of unique genetic coding, and we just don't know enough yet, but are learning more than we ever have before, partly through, well, studying the outliers. This isn't meant to give false hope for a cure, because the awful nature of cancer progression is that all of the great aspects of evolution are at work in reverse, but yeah, it's OK to be hopeful anyway.)

This week at my gig, a marketing program brought in a startlingly high response rate, about 2X more than predicted, for a very mature program. The amount was statistically significant, in a reporting system that's stable, and possibly explained due to creative and tactical choices. Needless to say, I'm thrilled by the performance, and staring it down to see if I can replicate it with other programs. But in and of itself, it's just one campaign, just one data point in an ever-growing sea of numbers, and might not be a breakthrough.

Now, the other side of the street. I also performed a post-mortem on a challenged campaign, where the client tried something very different from our usual practices, and wound up producing numbers that were substantially below our medians. A co-worker who is new to this sort of analysis called the result terrible, and while I don't disagree, I had to bring in my perspective... which is that no data is terrible, especially because we didn't know what metrics the client was anticipating. While the set of numbers we got in this instance looked like underperformance, we will only really know that later, once these metrics prove out as ordinary, or give us an outlier.

So if your marketing programs are delivering consistency and certainty and a narrow performance array, shake it up. Push your levers, either creative or tactical, more to the margins (in, of course, a test cell). Even if this means that you leave some money on the table from something that you'll later think "Well, of course that didn't work," it's still got crazy value, because it puts a number on the practice, and lets you counsel clients later away from trouble.

Because if you are in this for the long-term benefit of your client and career, you quickly learn that the outliers drive the learning... and that any marketer or advertiser that isn't learning isn't, well, likely to make a career of this.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Why People Hate Marketers: Back To School Fuel

Like This, But With More Money

In my marketing and advertising feed today? Back to school sales, forecasts, and strategies.

No, seriously.

And I understand the rationale. Planning ahead is required in this line of work, as any number of August projects with icicles and Christmas trees in my past have shown. There's only so much in the way of Dads and Grads that you can pitch, especially since all of that stuff should have been in the pipe a month ago, and July 4 just doesn't hit that many consumer categories, or extends to that much spend. But the thing about back to school is that unlike those projects, they don't hit you straight in the teeth of something you might already be struggling with. Thinking about Christmas in the dog days of summer can actually be kind of pleasant.

To wit, it's mid-May, folks. There's still a month left in the current school year here in the mid-Atlantic region where I live. Weeks of rousting the kids out of bed to do something they don't want to do, weeks more of slogging through the interminable paperwork, weeks of trying to keep their eyes on the prize of grades and attendance when they already have eight months of pulling on that rope. They are beaten down. I am beaten down. The sun is finally coming out, and the days are getting longer, and the distractions are getting thicker than the lawns on a daily basis. Dances. Concerts. Proms. Bike rides and blockbuster movies and cousins visiting from places where the school year is already over, and all of it -- every single last distraction -- is more interesting to them, and me, than the day-in day-out of the last six weeks. Especially the last two weeks, when the schedules go all sidewise because we don't want to spend on air conditioning with our tax dollars.

It's the last mile of the current run, which is always, well, the one that takes the most discipline to complete. Oh, and admitting any of this out loud? Does you no good. Gives the kids the great hint that, well, no one really cares that much about their science fair project, how important the recital is, or anything more than the grades on the report card. Not even how they got them, really. There may be parents out there who are hitting on every cylinder at this point of the year, but I, personally, don't know any of those people. The rest of us need some time away from the grind -- you know, the good four to six traditional weeks of summer vacation -- to look forward to those eight hours a day where the little darlings, um, get far away from the house. Rather than the current eight hours a day when we're trying to make sure they are doing what they need to get through.

So, to my fellow marketing and ad pros? Do what you need to do to get your BTS work cleared. Don't lose any business, hurt your chances of getting out for the Memorial Day weekend, or not look proactive to your clients.

But when the media calls to ask you about how the year's looking, when the sales are going to start, and how the new hotness is getting in the stores before anyone has ever been before?

Don't take the call, or give them the quotes they need to write the piece.

Because the life you save may be your own...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

GPS Sugar Beets: Tech Disruptions

Precision Food Inc

Here's something that I didn't know until recently... one of the hidden but potent benefits of global positioning systems involves doing a better job of feeding the planet. It turns out that the tech can be used for something called precision agriculture, where plants are optimally placed and watered, with exceptional control over the yield and livelihood of the crop. For items like sugar beets, which have exceptional fragility to go with delicate needs in terms of the mix of water, food and sunlight, the tech is wildly popular among farmers, because the return on investment is just a constant. All without any of the queasiness of genetically mutated organisms, scary chemicals, or anything else that would bring up moral issues.

Now, if you had seen ahead for this application of tech, you could have made some nice coin, either from starting a company that made the gear, or from providing venture capital at good rates to farmers that were looking to make the change, and so on. And that's how this all pivots back to marketing and advertising, which is what we discuss here.

No one, we can assume, makes mobile tech with the pure and unadulterated interest in impacting something as mundane as email... but, well, that's happened. In a big way. Responsive templates are now table stakes because you can't be sure what kind of platform and screen your lead will use to access your material. Subject lines are now subject to not just ISP filtering, but to truncation from smaller display screens. Geotargeting, once seen as creepy and ineffective because e-commerce plays for brick and mortar weren't going to match an office or home laptop to a shopping situation, is now increasingly necessary to close the last mile of a sale.

By the way? That pace of change is going to just keep growing. Smartphone use while commuting is going to go from text to voice, as laws and social prohibitions against distracted driving kick in hard. (Honestly, look for texting drivers to be treated like drunk drivers very, very soon.) Syncing email across devices and dayparts will be table stakes. Mobile sizes could easily change again, either through different sized screens (I still long for the error-free typing of a full qwerty keyboard and holstered phones, but I'm beyond the event horizon of prospects, I know), or through the inevitable introduction of holograms to more optimal screen sizes, or heads-up VR through appliances.

The point is this: change, even in something that seems mature, is inevitable. Thinking through such things, and keeping an eye out for trends that could impact your business, is just required.

After all, these sugar beets aren't going to grow themselves, Neither is your business.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Death Or Glory

Our once (and future?) logo

One of my first and most potent lessons in sales and marketing happened before I was, well, in the field. I cut my teeth as a DIY indie musician, leading a rock band for much of a decade, with a few hundred gigs in a bunch of areas. (Above, you'll see our logo. Bitchin', no?)

While the band was unsuccessful commercially, I learned great life lessons from the experience, and made some truly lasting relationships. It's also been a big part of my professional life as a consultant, because at its core, stage time is stage time, and it's fairly impossible to be too nervous in a corporate setting. The latter isn't going to boo, clear the room, or throw beer at you. Well, not often.

We're now coming up on a meaningful anniversary for the band, which has led to a spark of interest from some of the alumni... and there's the quality of what Seth Godin refers to as an idea virus here. I'm finding myself looking back through old track lists, mulling over what covers might work with those songs now, asking friends and players for ideas on staffing the holes in the lineup, daydreaming about T-shirt designs and so on, and so on.

All for a business that failed financially before, and will most assuredly fail again, at least in terms of time and money spent versus any income brought in. There's no hue and cry from our fan base because, well, there wasn't really a fan base to make that hue and cry. Even bands with fan bases are incredibly challenged in the current market environment, since digital distribution of music has been a simple case of devaluing the income potential for the musicians. If we do this again, it's strictly a hobby for the "benefit" of friends and family, even if we were to somehow attract outside attention.

Which makes it Art, perhaps, or something a little more onanistic. My thoughts so far are to play gigs rarely if at all, put new songs up on a web site for voluntary payments, and in a flight of fancy, replace or supplement all of the old T-shirts. If time is made for this, it will be to just do the stuff that's fun, and none of the stuff that isn't.

What's not fun as an indie musician? Grubbing for gigs, begging radio stations to play you, journalists to review and cover your events, and doing everything you can to drum up a crowd with sweat equity. And that all happens before the gear moving, fights with sound personnel and gate keepers, and so on. Even all these years later, with the fading of memory, I've got no inclination at all to spend time schmoozing gatekeepers, or finding someone to do that for us.

And yet... I can't completely separate the urge to create from the urge to find a market, because both urges are, well, creative. Asking me to make without marketing is like asking me to write and not record, or rehearse without performing; a near impossible separation of what has always seemed like a paired process.

Besides, imagine if we were, well, so much better or more successful at the enterprise now that we're older and filled with the knowledge that we aren't going to ever make a living from music.

It's, well, keeping me up just thinking about it.

Just like in the old days.

Play me out, Joe Strummer...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Trump Wins, And Attack Ads Lose

Attack Ad Proof?

Tonight in Indiana, the Republican presidential primary more or less ended, as Donald Trump's end game victory over Senator Ted Cruz led to a suspension of the Senator's campaign. While Trump won't acquire the delegates needed until the final states vote in less than a month to wrap things up, and Ohio governor John Kasich seems ready to soldier on in the hopes of an 11th hour reversal, it seems fairly academic now. A man who has never served in elective office is the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for the American Presidency.

There will be a great deal of Monday morning quarterbacking as to how this all happened. There were plenty of factors. Too many candidates that were too similar early, which helped to splinter the non-Trump vote. A media that could never say no to a Trump appearance, leading to earned promotional benefits that dwarfed all other coverage. Trump's willingness to avoid canned stump speeches and predictability, ensuring more attention. A built-in competency at media manipulation, and an ability to bring in untapped voters to a larger tent, particularly in states with open primaries. A never-ending side show of outrage, controversy, late night humor fodder and red meat for the base, all of which meant that the story was rarely, if ever, anything but Trump. Add it all up, and it lead to a narrative of inevitability, and a political season that will dominate future textbooks.

But you read me for marketing and advertising, and what this campaign has proven, more than anything else to me, is the growing ineffectiveness of traditional political spots.

In state after state, the stop Trump PACs trotted out an absurd number of ads that never seemed to slow the candidate's momentum. While they might have contributed to the candidate's overall unfavorable ratings, or kept Trump from reaching majorities until later in the campaign, they rarely got to a point of real effectiveness. When rivals attacked Trump directly, the damage always seemed to come in reverse.

Consider the states where Trump actually suffered setbacks. Wisconsin, where an infrastructure of talk radio and a very active electorate gave Cruz his last meaningful win. Iowa, where caucuses played to Cruz's ground game advantage. Texas and Ohio, where Cruz and Kasich kept home field advantage. A number of smaller states, particularly in the rural West, where politics tends to be a personal and retail experience.

In none of these places was an air game of attack ads effective in stopping the real estate mogul. Even ads that seemed effective, like a spot where women read seemingly damming quotes from the candidate's own mouth, and made Trump himself wince on the podium, had no effect.

Why? Well, it's fairly simple, and also plainly terrifying to media networks: no one really watches television commercials any more. Especially outside of live DVR-proof events like sports or, well, debates. We're all ready to click off to something else, or eschew live television entirely.

So what actually works now? Social media, which Trump's campaign took to like a duck to water. Word of mouth, which is especially effective when a campaign activates someone who normally doesn't engage in politics. Again, a strength for Trump over his rivals. Email marketing that seems new, and different, and novel... and since Trump didn't push for donations, that, again, qualified.

Will it work in the long run? The betting professionals don't think so, and you generally have to respect those folks, because of their track record. But few thought Trump would get this far, and no one has put a lasting hurt on him yet.

What I do know, however, is this: if Trump is finally stopped, and it isn't done through broadcast media spots, but through another marketing channel?

We will see very different campaigns in the future. Ones that the broadcast networks, or broadcast advertising pros, won't like nearly so much.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Heavy Rotation Hurting

They Aren't Kidding

(with apologies to one of the most influential skits ever, the great "Deep Hurting" riff from the Mad Scientists on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." See it here, if you haven't already.)

This weekend, I indulged my strongest sports addiction -- the NBA playoffs -- and was struck, as I am every year, by the relentless problem that is the marketing and advertising impact of broadcast media in real time, when combined with heavy time commitments.

It would be one thing if I were a fan of just, say, the Golden State Warriors. But I'm pretty much watching as many of these games as I can manage around the rest of my day, and seeing how I also maintain a sports blog, that's a lot of hoop... and a lot of the same commercials. Over. And over. And over.

Now, I understand that the demographics of pro hoop are a marketing gold mine. Affluent, diverse, national and international, tied across top tier channels and DVR-proof, with games that resolve in 2+ hours, with pretty consistent action and limited replay and injury breaks. It's one of an ever-decreasing number of places where you can be pretty sure your ads are being seen, in real time, with no skipping.

Which also means that, just like last year's too visible moments for daily fantasy league plays and direct to consumer pharmaceutical outlays in the NFL season, we're going to lose our minds over this. Tina Fey making payments with her Amex card, the head-scratching "Angry Birds" movie tie-in, testimonials to the DIY virtues of people who don't pay for satellite service, lather, rinse, repeat.

When I was a kid (pre-DVR and yes, per-VHS), watching re-runs was just something you did. From countless Bugs Bunny cartoons to prime-time shows, seeing something twice was just unavoidable, even if you complained about it, because, well, not much else to do. But now that commercials are a relatively rare phenomenon in the streaming age, repeats get your brand noticed, and I'd even argue, over-noticed. There are brands that I'm so aware of that I can't imagine feeling good about patronizing them, especially when my level of irritation with their ad campaigns is factored in. Even slightly modified ads with mildly different content would be something of a relief now. Especially as we've got another six weeks or so of the NBA playoffs to go.

So if you are in charge of one of these campaigns, I'm begging you... dial back the frequency. Mix in some other treatments. Reconsider your awkward game tie-ins with athletes interacting with your characters.

Because what you are doing is just painful in the extreme. And eventually leads to Adam Sandler's current career and reputation.

Deep Hurting. DEEP HURTING...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.